(YORK’S FOLIC-BOOK No. 1) 



The Undefended 
Border A Story by 

Claire Mum ford 


HR World*s most significant monument to 
T^EACE is not the idle palace at the 
Hague, 

It is a monument not made ij? hands, not 
visible to the eye, though it is big enough for 
all men to see and as high as Heaven is high 
—a monument for all peoples to emulate, yet 
a monument that is only an imaginary line,--- 
the line that is the border between the two 
greatest nations on Earth,--a border without a 
fort, without a ship, without an armed man 

to preserve its integrity-^ 

THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 
BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES 
AND CANADA 


CLAIRE MUMFORD 


August, 1914 


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I* ' Children of the Armies of FRANCE 

YORK KANK YORK 
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(YORK’S FOLK-BOOK No. 1) 


The Undefended 
Border A Story by 

Claire Mumford 


YORK KANE YORK 
NEW YORK 



First published, February, 1917 


September, 1914 

This unimportant story is dedicated to the 

EMINENT ORATOR 

who, by quoting the foregoing words of the 
author, conferred distinction upon them. 

February, 1917 




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Copyrig&t, 1917, by Claire Mumford 









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The crowd dining on the Terrace of the Chateau had been 
in the House that afternoon — it was the second day of the 
Extraordinary Session — and we were still in the glamour 
of Laurier’s speech, even Colonel Washington whom I had 
forcibly restrained when the Floor assaulted their desks 
because a Frenchman’s call to England’s sons made them 
feel that way : 

‘‘We Canadians are fussy about decorum. The galleries 
must be seen and not heard,” 

I explained to the Colonel, who is a bit inclined to preach 
that American Customs are good enough for anybody. No 
wonder! With a name like a Handy Compendium of 
United States History — Randolph Lee Washington. 

There was no doubt of it — the current that runs around 
the Empire was running strong, carrying us all along with 
it. The Terrace twanged like violin strings when the bow 
has just been lifted, vibrated with the British Empire note 
that Laurier had sounded so well — with such a thrill on 
the high G string of patriotism. 

Sir Pierce had come back from the Lobby with the last 
editions. 

“Here’s the speech! All of it. And very decent it was 
of Laurier, I must say!” 

We had been trying to remember exactly what Sir Wil- 
frid had said. 

Sir Pierce swallowed his coffee in one gulp; (You may 


5 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


know — don’t — why the English usually let their cofifee get 
lukewarm and take it that way — like a dose,) then he 
began to read aloud in his nice Oxford accent. You know 
— that sort of English which doesn’t seem to be laboring 
under so great a strain as usual. 

“It is our ‘J^wty’ — ah! Ah! h’m! — ^Etceterah! Etceterah! 
“to let Great Britain know and to let the friends and foes 
of Great Britain know that there is in Canada but one mind 
and one heart.” H’m! Ahh! That’s not exactly what I 
v/as lookin’ for. — “But here we have it !” 

“She” 

“Canada, you know, he means,” Sir Pierce politely ex- 
plained. “She has engaged in this war, not from any sel- 
fish motive, for any purpose of aggrandisement, but to main- 
tain untarnished the honor of her name, to maintain her 
treaty obligations and to save Civilisation from the un- 
bridled lust of power and of conquest.” Etceterah, Etcete- 
rahh. “Long we have enjoyed the benefits of our British 
citizenship. Today it is our jewty to accept its responsi- 
bilities and its sacrifices ! ! !” 

Sir Pierce stopped short and nobody at our table said 
anything. 

“Ra-th-er!” came from the table behind us. 

“And Sir Pierce, as soon as you get home, tell England 
from me that Canada can send five hundred thousand 
picked men — and will — if England needs them!” 

It was said in as low a tone as the Personage in 
Authority can manage to get out of his big chest, but it 
resounded abroad because it came in the midst of one of the 
worrying, gnawing little silences, worse than a noise, which 
were running in and out of our talk. 

Of course, Mrs. Spencer glowed at this — everybody basks 


6 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

in the rays of the Personage — nevertheless, those unsym- 
pathetic, dull little silences were Susan Maria Randolph 
Spencer's fault — Susan Maria, ordinarily known as Happy 
and only very extraordinarily, at a christening or a wed- 
ding or something of that sort, as Susan. 

Everybody who knows Happy knows, whether they admit 
it or not, that she makes the atmosphere, wherever she is, 
exactly what she chooses to have it. So when we got as 
far as coffee even Mother admitted that the cool little breeze 
of neutrality blowing now and again across our table was 
Happy's inspiration. 

But I knew it when the jellied gumbo came on because 
between us from the first — and I knew her long before she 
married my cousin Jim, there has always been an under- 
standing so complete that we hardly ever need to say it, 
whatever it is. And I was puzzled, for Happy is as tingling 
and responsive as a wind harp and answers like a pipe 
organ to a big theme. The repressed drama, the poise and 
grace of Laurier's performance were exactly the sort of 
thing that her cosmopolitan spirit finds ‘‘worthwhile" in 
whatever country she may find it. 

Perhaps Sir Pierce had been too near the edge that day ? 
We jolly well knew why we were always dining with him, 
why he had come to Ottawa, why before August 4 he had 
been so vague about his shooting dates in Alberta, why he 
was not already on his way home to get in line at the War 
Office since England had such urgent need of officers and 
he is a Colonel, and a D. S. O. 

Perhaps Happy was making it plain that she is an Ameri- 
can and means to stay one the rest of her life — that she 
had had enough of Englishmen and English soldiers — God 
help her! But Sir Pierce Lovelly would be another sort 


7 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


of story, different from Jim, and worthwhile from any 
angle. The Lovelly family thread has a catskin earl run- 
ning in it and Sir Pierce long ago came into his baronetcy 
and several good houses. And a very decent chap to boot, 
in spite of his being so outrageously good looking and what 
Happy calls so ''ineradicably English.'’ 

By which I understand her to mean that caste is the 
steel framework of English life and that class is in the 
very marrow fat of an Englishman's bones. 

''Except the top-shelf ones — " 

I always tell her. "They are the simplest, least self- 
conscious persons on earth because they never happened to 
see anyone who is any better than they are, so they never 
give the question a thought." 

Which is exactly the manner and build of Sir Pierce. It 
has never occurred to him that anybody might be any better 
than he is, nor any worse for that matter. He is simple 
and direct and interested and courteous and generous. 

Now if you know any better way than that of being a 
gentleman I don't. So let it go at that. 

And you may take Happy's word for it, too. She says 
that before she met Sir Pierce she never knew exactly what 
an aristocrat meant, because she had met a cowboy in Texas 
and a paper hanger in New York and a chauffeur in France 
and a newsboy in Chicago — all of whom had been gentle- 
men ; and she had met a king who seemed to her an affable 
snob of the bourgeois class, so it "had mixed her up on the 
aristocrat question." 

"But then I am only an American woman, so how can I 
be expected to know," 

She adds with malice in my direction because I am half- 
American by virtue of the most charming aristocrat in all 


8 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

the world — my little Boston mother whom Happy covets 
so much that she used to threaten to marry me for the sake 
of acquiring a half-interest in her. 

When Sir Pierce stopped reading he turned to Happy to 
get back his own thrill intensified, made exquisite — the way 
Happy gives back any thought, any feeling that you give 
to her. 

I waited with curiosity, for her answer — Sir Pierce had 
said, 

‘Xaurier put it well, eh. The way we’re feelin’ — what 
we’re fightin’ for?” 

Not since the first minute — Happy and I were in the 
Chateau lobby when the clerk pinned up the bulletin : 

‘‘ENGLAND HAS DECLARED WAR”— 

had I been able to get out of her anything more partisan 
than her hatred of all militarism, an indifferent flap now 
and then of her American neutrality. 

Yet I did not know then nor did I think that she knew, 
whether or no she had any right to call herself an “Ameri- 
can citizen.” 

Jim was~or is — an Englishman and she had not di- 
vorced him — not yet. And if he is alive he is likely to be 
an important Englishman for I see that Evan Spencer, the 
Guardsman is listed “Killed in action,” and that Langley, 
the other cousin, is in Paris with a deadly wound. 

Jim might be dead— of course — I had not heard for many 
years, nor she, I think, for ten — but I wondered that night 
if she had seen and remembered what these deaths would 
mean to Jim. 

I have never dared to speak of the English part of the 
family, much less of Jim. But now that it is war again 


9 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


and I have a heartache and smarting eyes because I am 
forty-nine and stiff-elbowed from a Boer bullet and the 
Minister of Militia will have none of me — she must know 
that I want to talk about the old days — and Jim. 

For Jim had his glory days. One morning all over the 
Empire, Englishmen’s necks stiffened because the papers 
were telling that a young English officer with only twenty 
men had taken a Boer battery of three guns and saved the 
battalion. 

After that Young Jim was my personal hero. When the 
Canadians were brigaded under Smith-Dorrien I had the 
good luck to be in on Jim’s second day — a rather special 
bit of war business that sent his name skyrocketting again 
and laid him up for two months and did something — I don’t 
know what — to his nerves or his moral fibre, or some- 
thing. I only know that I have seen war do it to older 
and wiser men than Jim — men without his Irish Devil-May- 
Care ancestry. Jim’s mother was the O’Heartley heiress 
and the O’Heartleys are famous through the four Provinces 
for charm, devilment and long life. 

For war — ^the war that I know anyway — sends a man’s 
spirit off on a holiday and his body back to the brute in less 
time than many of us have confessed. 

O yes! Just at first it makes him sense — drunk with 
excitement. After the reaction-the beast-sleep and the 
beast-hunger — he has the craving — excitement and more ex- 
citement, until twisting his bayonet to retrieve it from a 
chap’s entrails doesn’t make him feel much of anything, not 
even nausea. 

But it was the endless, mouldering South African year 
after his second glory day that did it for Jim — when he 
was crazy-homesick for the wife, and dead-dull with anx- 


10 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

iety because Happy was having it out without him, going 
through it alone. When he knew it was time for the baby 
Tve caught him on his stomach gnawing his fingers in 
agony, and, of course, not saying anything. O ! The Eng- 
lish half of him was a perfect master of the technic of hold- 
ing his tongue. 

No wonder the English go off their head sometimes, 
fall down harder in reaction than other people, must have 
a Mafeking London night once in a century. Doubtless 
Freud, today, diagnoses them as a nation lunatic from 
suppressed reflexes. 

Thanks be! The American half of me let me work oflf 
some of it in talk — in fat heavy, curses on the Boers and 
the English and the murderous climate and the horrible 
scorching dop that burned out our under-fed, shrivelled 
stomachs and made scarlet threads out of our nerves — for 
our moral messages to travel over. 

I warned Jim that I saw it all getting hold of him, 
whiskey or dop when it ought to have been tea, gambling 
when it ought to have been sleep. He didn’t even care 
much about a bath when the rare chance came. Every- 
thing decent seemed such a long way off. The other sort 
of thing, fine habits, fine food, fine ladies seemed as remote 
and improbable as Heaven. For it is true even if it is 
trite that habits and morals are pretty much the same thing. 

And most of us hadn’t a habit left except the habit of 
taking a drink when we were done up, which was most of 
the time — when we were not fighting. 

And fighting — by then we were “seasoned troops” — was 
the most horrible of all the reactions — just an emergence 
of the sub-human, the beast lust for killing. 

And take it from “one who has been there” — that is what 


11 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


^‘seasoned troops'’ means : the nonchalant going into battle 
because the seasoned trooper remembers that when the 
fight is on the blood lust will rise in him and he will exult 
in killing, enjoy the fun of hunting in the pack. 

‘‘See that red-headed Boer bloke on a white horse, Dick?" 
Jim said to me after he was a major and didn't have to 
do any killing for himself. 

“I'm going to pot him myself — make a nice messy little 
spill though. I never could stand red hair on a white horse." 
Jim dismounted, picked up a dead trooper's rifle — at least I 
hope that he was dead for he had a large hole where his 
eyes and nose ought to be, and began to snub-nose and 
cross cut some bullets before he put them in the magazine. 

“Making a nice little dum-dum for his big tum-tum," he 
sing-songed. 

“For God's sake, Jim! We English don't do that." 

“O, yes we do. Kind sir, a few," he hummed. 

Then he growled, 

“We've seen enough of the damn Dutch dum-dums in our 
men's bellies, haven't we? Here's something on account, 
you Boer." 

Jim's eye ran along his sight. The big Boer stiffened 
and toppled forward, then rolled to the ground. 

“Got him," said Jim, sucking in his lower lip, which was 
a little boy's trick he had when he didn't want his grin to 
show you just how pleased he was with himself. 

And I suppose that nobody ever denied that Jim's smile 
was just what Happy used to say it was — 

“The liveliest, dearest smile ever !" 

It was because all of this — and more — the horrible “more" 
of Jim's year at home after the war, was running in my 
consciousness under the talk, that night on the Terrace, 


12 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

that I tried to look into Happy’s eyes when Sir Pierce 
stopped his reading of Laurier’s high words. But her eyes 
were far off, across the Terrace wall, over the broad river, 
over the low lights of Hull — far out in the dark — ^the Dark 
that is the wide empty sweep of Canada, sweeping up, up 
to the North Pole. 

But she answered lightly enough with a saucy flirt of 
her American neutrality. 

‘"O! Yes! Sir Wilfrid can translate French into exqui- 
site English, can’t he? And wasn’t it all sweetly perfumed 
with the scent of his English title?” 

‘'O, you little cat with your skin-deep democracy!” said 
my sister Lutie. 

Happy gave her back her dearest injured baby look and 
began to make a speech. 

‘‘O, I don’t mean that Laurier isn’t in it too! War is 
the one persistent delusion. We are all duped by the Glory 
Piper. Same old tune. But when he plays it we all dance 
to the music. We women dance hardest. We are always 
siccing you on. Waving flags and telling you to run along 
and do something heroic — a long way off from us where 
we can’t see how dirty you are when you do it!” 

One of those crawling little silences edged in here before 
she went on. 

“But Canada is taking it hard, isn’t she?) She always 
takes everything that England gets — only harder. I re- 
member that she took the Coronation hard. A much more 
severe case of Coronation than afflicted England.” She 
turned to my sister, 

“Why, Lutie, you remember the Jones-Cave- Joneses? 
Didn’t they go about getting their clothes and steamer 
tickets with an air of solemn responsibility — as if they were 


13 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


expected to polish up the Crown with their brand of plate 
polish — as if in fact the crown couldn’t be used unless they 
got there to polish in person. And yesterday — in the Sen- 
ate gallery? Didn\ you feel it? I did — the fact that if 
nice Prince Princess Pat’s big new hat hadn’t got there on 
time, the British Empire would have slipped a cog?” 

We chuckled at Happy. We always do. O, Yes. We 
spoil her — ^but Sir Pierce only smiled — with patience. She 
had evidently not yet got it, the English view point about 
this war — the right one, naturally. But now that he had 
corpe to explain it to her she would swing into line — where 
she belonged — of course — was she not the widow of an Eng- 
lish soldier, a D. S. O., however unfortunate in his later 
habits. 

Years ago it ran around London clubs that Jim had died 
somewhere off in South Africa. Happy has never con- 
tradicted it. 

But as to her English sympathies — that night on the 
Terrace I was remembering the day before in the Gallery 
of the Senate when the Royalties seated themselves after 
the last note of ''God save the King” died in the band. 

"Rather solemn and business like this undress 'Opening’ 
I had whispered to her. "The Duke’s fine in his khaki. A 
bit like the real thing, eh?” 

She had whispered back, 

"Real Duke, of course. Connaught looks exactly like 
one. The only duke I ever happened to see who did. But 
I never felt more grown-up, more republican, in my life. 
The whole show seems exactly like the children’s story — 
you know the Three Bears.” 

"Big sized chair for the Duke and the middling sized 
chair for the duchess and the little chair down on the floor 


14 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

for Princess Patricia. And all of those really elegant 
backings and bowings of the Gentleman Black-Rod.'’ 

Later she had whispered, 

"‘I like that — that's human” 

‘‘That," being the occasion of the Duchess's taking out 
of a case the duke's eyeglasses which she slipped to him 
when a back-bowing aide handed the duke his speech. 

Also she had “Liked it," when the Duke saluted at the 
mention of the members of Parliament. When he uncov- 
ered she showed great interest. She said that she was 
trying to make out whether he uncovered at God's name 
or at the king's. Which was where, seeing that she had 
made up her mind to be naughty, I gave her over to hei 
cousin. Colonel Washington, then, as always, since she 
wore pigtails, glad to have her on any terms, — I sometimes 
think, at any price — to any of us — even to her. 

Not that Ran isn't a good sort, alertly good, almost as if 
he were afraid that he might not be good, if he let himself 
go. 

He is Happy's second cousin once removed and although 
he and I have been chums — of a sort — for thirty years, I 
have often wished that he were so far removed that he 
could never get near her again. 

But their cousinship is on the Southern side and the 
South takes cousins seriously. Still, he is a New Yorker 
of the very type itself. And New York is where he got 
his maternal grandfather's banking house and his hard- 
working stocks and bonds and his Yankee stick-at-iveness 
and his manner — a bit as if the whole Earth were a little 
thing that didn't belong to him yet — only because he hadn't 
yet taken the trouble to buy it. 

There is absolutely quite nothing to be said against Ran, 


15 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

Colonel Washington, — some sort of a decorative militia 
colonelcy, though he was graduated by West Point be- 
fore he resigned to inherit the banking house. From the 
American view point and in fact, from all good fellows, 
Ran is a big bit of alright. Broad-girthed, and tall, quick- 
witted and quick-actioned and quick-spending when it is to 
save the other chap’s money and straight as an Indian, — the 
way West Point turns them out. High powered and high 
geared he is, like the car he had brought over the week 
before ‘'for Happy and me to play with,” he said. 

Which didn’t exactly tickle me to death, for Happy had 
been pleased enough with our traps and rather smart-step- 
ping cobs. But Ran always gets it all his way. Mother 
thought that she loathed motor cars. Ran has shown her 
that she was mistaken. She has graced the tonneau of that 
dust distributing instrument devised for gambling with 
Death, hours upon hours of every day since Ran imported 
it. 

“Love it, Dick! Simply love it? Do see what you can 
get for the old pair. Dear ?” She had said that morning. 

I had been frank enough about the car, greeted him and 
it with, 

“Dam you! Can’t you let us have Happy to ourselves 
for just one month once a year?” 

He had smiled — one of his most cheerful ones. 

“Not on your sweet little, neat little lives, Dick! Though 
I like you all well enough to come by myself. But I’m 
going to get Happy for keeps pretty soon now, I think.” 

And that day, at luncheon alone with me at the club, he 
threw all his cards on the table. 

“Tell me Dick, for God’s sake, is Jim dead? But of 
course he is. I’d have heard — ^I’ve followed up every last 


16 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

clue. She has never let me breathe Jim’s name to her — 
would never speak to me again if I dared. But she is 
thinking about making it all legal — divorce for desertion 
and non-support. Backing and filling though. The aunts 
have taken the papers to her a dozen times. Always says 
“Not now. Tm very content.” But she’s weakening. 
The years begin to show up lonely ahead. 

I don’t know where Ran found it — in my eyes or manner, 
but he did. 

“Dick! You believe that Jim’s alive 1 If there’s any proof 
man tell me. I’m all in. It’s been a long pull — can’t you 
see !” 

I could. He was cafe-au-lait color about the chops, the 
way big ruddy men go pale. 

“When did you hear? Where is he? But he isn’t, I 
say ! My detec — my men.” 

He was ashamed of the first word. 

“I have looked everywhere the globe round. He’s dead 
I tell you. Proibably killed himself after Happy bolted — 
after the woman on the Channel boat ...” 

Jim didn’t kill himself then. He isn’t the sort to give up 
any fight — even with himself. He wanted to live— to dis- 
prove the woman story. There was never any other wo- 
man near his life after the first day that he saw Happy — I 
could swear to that, and never would be, not if he lived to 
be eighty. 

But eight years ago I did know that he was alive. Alice 
— ^his sister, wrote to me, said that he was in South Africa 
under another name — making good, paying the old debts — 
he gambled away a matter of thirty thousand pounds, about 
all he had, in that first year at home. She said that he had 
not taken a drop of alcohol since Happy went away. She 


17 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDEH 

wrote because Jim had told her to ask me to let her know 
if Happy wanted to divorce him — that he ‘‘wanted to make 
it easy for her.’’ 

I knew then what Jim meant to do for Happy in case 
she wanted to be free as I knew why he didn’t do it at 
first — kill himself. He loved her too much to let her have 
the least twinge of remorse. And — yes — I know this, too. 
If Jim is still alive he believes that Happy may still care a 
little — in spite of everything. 

Nobody could love as they two had loved without that 
sort of faith. It used to be like having the best music 
played on your own nerves — just to be in the same room 
with them. 

Of course Happy was the most vitally lovely of all the 
American girls who have bewildered and bewitched Eng- 
lishmen 

But Heaven knows she is lovelier today with the sweet 
faint lines of Jim’s hard lessons written on her face. Pluck 
and sweetness ! Anybody can see that she has taken it all 
that way, all that Jim taught her. D — m him ! 

No! I cant! I liked him more than other men. And 
sometimes it seems to me that anyone who has liked Jim 
must like him to the end. I wonder . . . 

But of course she must loathe him. In spite of all his 
dread of her knowing, of his running to cover, at last she 
saw him drunk — ^beastly drunk. And she was born with a 
peculiar horror of drunkenness. 

She must forget Jim — if she hasn’t. She must marry 
one of these two Highly Desirables — Ran, I think. . . . 
She isn’t young, though sihe will always be younger than 
anybody else — ^by the grace of her vital spirit. And she 
has only a lean little income and she is too much alone be- 


18 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


cause she is so infernally proud that she will not let any of 
m: amuse her when it costs much to do it. 

And she is loving hearted and big-souled and full of great 
''Humanity’’ schemes that need a big background, a big for- 
tune — power and place — like Ran’s. And she has a child 
hunger and a cruel scar where she lost the boy. He was a 
year old — died a month before Jim got home. 

Because of all these things missing in her life, that day 
at luncheon I did not tell Ran of my sure knowledge of 
Jim, eight years back. 

But at the time I had answered Alice with news of 
Happy’s contentment. Five years ago, in London, Alice 
told me that soon after Jim’s first letters he had paid the 
debts on the house and gone away from his first address in 
South Africa — ^that letters came back unopened. London 
clubs gossipped about his death, some untraceable rumor, 
but there were really no facts to go on. She did not, some- 
how, feel that he was dead. Neither did I. Nor do I 
now. . . . 


2 

It had been on the day of the opening of the Session that 
1 nearly decided for Ran and America against the field, — 
meaning Sir Pierce Lovelly — if — if only it isn’t still Jim — 

We had sauntered down through the Parliament gardens 
and foregathered for tea under the awning on the Terrace 
of the Chateau. Happy waved the teapot enthusiastically 
all over us without damage to anyone’s clothes, the law of 
gravity, of course, makes allowances for Happy. 

"Really you are fine, you Colonials ! How you play up !” 


19 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


Kipling always says everything for you. It was just like 
it — ^^The Song of the Sons” wasn't it. She chanted, 

‘'Count, are we feeble and few? 

Hear, is our speech so rude ? 

Look, are we poor in the land ? 

Judge, are we men of the Blood?” 

“So you did like it today, you Minx?” I said. But she 
wouldn't notice my existence even by so much as putting 
the sugar in my tea. I had to do it myself. She went on 
with what she calls her “impartial observations.” 

“Fifty million dollars you are going to vote to the old 
mother England tomorrow, aren't you? That is why we 
had this pretty show today. But, I think that I like our 
simple ceremonies better. 

“Why, we inaugurate a president of ninety millions odd 
without any fuss at all. And it is impressive — the deep-cut 
kind of impression, though it is all just plain black coats 
and a plain bible and a plain oath.” 

“Yes,” Ran rapped out. “But it's a mighty big fine oath 
if it is plain. And that's all good enough for us, eh, 
Happy?” His eyes blazed at her though his eyes rarely 
blaze; the small, efficient, crackled gray-ice eyes that seem 
to have been evolved as the type-eyes of the Successful 
American Man. 

Sfhe smiled and waggled her bronze head but she flicked 
away the question and the sparks as she always flicks away 
that sort of thing from any man. At the minute I thought 
— “If it is Jim still I'd go and find him, bring him back to 
her — if he is fit — if he has washed himself inside and out 
of the drunkenness and the gambling. If the Spencer will, 
that good serviceable firmffibred Spencer specialty is on 


20 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

top again, as it always was before those two years of the 
war. 

It was a long year afterward before she knew the full 
tale of the War’s gift to her, that her husband was an Alco- 
holic and a ‘'confirmed gambler” who must play all night 
seven nights a week to still his craving for excitement at 
fever pitch, — a nervous, jumpy invalid who must fill his 
days with more excitement or with sodden sleep. 

Before the war his days and nights had been full of her, 
of fast^growing duties of citizenship and clean sport — of 
clean habits. 

Jim had just begun to run politically when the war called 
him. After the war, for the first six months the leaders 
tried to get him back into harness. It looked, — the Big 
One’s said — as if his hero performances might help him to 
climb far up the ladder. 

Then it began to leak, to trickle through the season’s 
gossip. “York-Spencer was drinking, taking a week off 
now and then to sober up, away from his wife who swal- 
lowed the lies. (Don’t you believe it !) York-Spencer was 
playing a sensational game — stiffer than any man’s in town, 
losing ten thousand pounds in one week — twenty hour sit- 
tings, though.” 

And then when everything crashed, the nasty story of a 
woman on a channel boat and Happy meeting them, head- 
on, and Jim too far gone to carry it off. 

Even the gossips could not embellish the horrid finish — 
a brazen, giggling woman of the streets on Jim’s arm when 
he lurched into his wife on the Dover platform. . . . 

Happy was off and settled in her little New York flat 
almost before Jim came out of his daze and into the light 


21 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


again. Alice believes that he did come out then, at once 
and for always. I believe it, too. . . . 

Happy did not write him even a word of good-by. She 
left a message for Alice to deliver. 

‘'There is but one thing in your power to help me. Let 
me never see you again.’' 

Alice is a Spencer of the right sort, ^he told me that she 
dared not kiss anything so frozen as Happy but that she 
had said, 

“Be sure I shall deliver the message with less mercy, than 
you would !” 

For the Spencer women, being a hero does not cover a 
multitude of sins. Alice is all Spencer except her dear 
faithful blue eyes. They are the O’Heartley eyes — like 
Jim’s. 

Happy’s eyes are dappled and deep-pooled and London- 
smoke color and they are always daring you to look through 
them — if you can! And if you catch them off guard they 
are always far away from you and sad. . . . Which will 
about do for Happy’s eyes. Numerous minor and two 
major poets have tried a hand at them and missed. I am 
only a case-hardened barrister. 

As to her mouth, why that has the baby curves left in the 
middle, also the tender corners. Also it smiles often 
enough to make you forget the sorry questions in her eyes. 
Besides you are nearly always waiting to see her teeth 
which are far too pretty to eat with, though she herself 
“dotes” on good things to eat and feeds us priceless little 
dinners in her shipshape flat. 

Furthermore, she cooks the greater part of the dinner 
herself because she assures us that the maid gets “too 


22 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

mussed up’’ to serve if she lets her help much in the cook- 
ing. 

Which seems illogical in the light of Happy’s own edible 
appearance in immaculate frills and fluffies and infinitesimal 
satin slippers — white at that, on the very stroke of the hour 
at which she invited you to dine. 

But if Happy tells you that it is so, why it is. Whether 
it is the statistics of Child Labor which she confides feo 
prettily to a National Commission or the dictum that ‘'petti- 
coats are in again,” “Believe Happy at the go-ofif” I tell the 
family. “It will save time and worry.” Usually, however, 
they take a certain period to recover from the shock of 
Happy’s successive leaps to meet Progress more than half 
way. 

3 

Princess Patricia’s Pets 

The afternoon that the Princess Patricia’s Battalion 
broke camp in the Park and entrained at the Grand Trunk 
Station we were in a group on the balcony over the porte 
cochere of the Chateau Laurier. 

The men came down Parliament Hill route-stepping, the 
veteran’s swing and saunter because over six hundred of 
them wore service ribbons on their chests. 

Some of the men bit hard on the under jaw but most of 
them wore smiles of one kind or another. 

Often a man waved his cap to answer a greeting from 
the curb or turned back to keep his smile turned on a tense- 
faced woman. 

But nearly all of the women down on the sidewalk and 
on our balcony wore their smiles incessantly. A few of them 


28 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

were stiff-set, still they were the ‘‘cheering them on’’ sort 
of smiles the Empire expects of her women today. 

But Happy was not smiling nor was a young officer chap 
not long married. He and the bride had dined with us 
the night before. He kept his eyes on a bedroom window 
high up in the front of the Hotel and waved a hand to it 
continuously. Happy waved a hand up there, too. So 
I looked up to catch the vision of a pretty arm and a pink 
handkerchief, waving. The other hand was tight clenched 
and beating a tight closed mouth. But the window cur- 
tain was quickly pulled over the face and only the waving 
handkerchief was still visible to us and to Donald, just 
turning into the train shed. 

Through gritted teeth Happy whispered to me, 

“Donald is a dear boy! I hope that he will be killed. 
Easiest for Dora in the end. I wish that I had the courage 
to go up there and tell her.’’ 

My hand gripped tight on letters in my pocket. If that 
was the way she felt about it — ^about Jim, then it was de- 
cided already. 

She had pointed a finger to show the way out of my 
indecision to help me where I was floundering in the net 
of responsibility, — the unfair trap that Jim had prepared 
for me. His letter to me, and a letter from Alice had come 
by the same post that morning. 


24 


II 


I had read and reread them, — Alice's letter to me and 
Jim’s letter to me — tried to get light without doing the 
impossible thing Jim had demanded — that I read his 
letter to Happy, — an enclosed, unsealed letter. I was to 
deliver this letter only if I thought it best for her. I was 
to destroy it if there was the least chance that it might cast 
a shadow on any present happiness of hers, — if it seemed 
to me best to leave her in a state of complete disgust with 
his share in her life. The deed to their garden house in 
Kensington and the bank draft I was to give her whenever 
I saw fit. 

^^At any time, at her divorce or at her wedding,” my in- 
structions read. 

The draft was on the Bank of Montreal and with the 
bonds was a matter of twelve thousand pounds. 

My letter called it ‘‘A niggardly payment on account of 
what I owe her in mere money these last ten years of non- 
support. But it is all that I could cash in on short orders 
and all I am sure about save three hundred pounds a year 
to keep me from begging of Alice in case I am disabled and 
not killed.” 

There was no other word of excuse, no history of the 
blank years. After a poignant space he had written it. 

^^The rest of this is an order to you — you have no choice. 
Read the enclosed letter to Happy and for G — d’s sake do 
not take the chance of letting me be an unwelcome ghost 


25 


tHE undefended border 

at any feast of hers. I know that your judgment and — (here 
was a word heavily crossed) cannot go wrong for her. I 
know how you will hate reading the enclosed but I cannot 
risk hurting her again. 

Good by if — and more thanks than I know how to say. 

Jim. 

Alice’s letter was long, full of dashes, criss-crossed, un- 
like her in every way. Evidently Jim’s arrival had been a 
cataclysm. 

‘‘Dear Dick, 

‘‘Jim has been and gone! Was here a week before the 
Fourth and gone yesterday. I think that they may be in 
France today. He had meant to go back to Africa by 
Saturday’s boat. As soon as the War Office examined him, 
of course they wanted to give him his rank. But he would 
take only a captaincy and in infantry. Odd, wasn’t it? 
You know how he loved his guns ! 

But he is under his own name since last week — our 
name, thank Heaven! Captain (not Colonel) James Chet- 
woode York-Spencer. He says that he has been keeping it 
ill the dark and scrubbing it for ten years. That he knows 
it is guaranteed to stay clean the rest of his life. Not that 
anybody could question the ten years record — after seeing 
Jim today. Splendid, isn’t a big enough word for him now. 
Muscles hard and fit. All day work, he says. And his 
brain the keenest, coolest ever. Absolutely up in the latest 
knowledge and world-movement kind of thing, as if he 
had been in it or ahead of it all instead of out in the African 
wilds. ‘'Book work nights” is all I got out of him. But he 
has one book published, two years ago — ^that awfully talked 
about anonymous “Economics and the Empire.” And there 


26 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

is a new one coming under his own name and the other 
one to be acknowledged. 

The new one is ‘'Empire and Gold’' or something like 
that. I shall not be able to make head nor tail of it but I 
lied beautifully about the other book. Told him that I 
took it to bed nights. So I did. It never failed in all the 
week he was here. I went to sleep instantly. He told me 
that he had not gambled for ten years. That cards would 
bore him to extinction. 

He is whole lives, a whole era beyond that wreck of him- 
self who came back from the Boer war. But he disciplines 
himself cruelly. A scientific, efficient kind of a human body 
machine. 

Only one cigar after dinner. I teased him about that 
weakness. His answer was the first word of her. 

“Yes,” he said, “it is an indulgence. But Happy used 
to like the smell. I have allowed myself to have it these 
two years back.” 

And not a drop, Dick! Not a drop since that awful 
minute on the Dover platform. But he is heart-breaking 
— about Happy I mean. At last he spoke often of her — 
as if she had never gone, as if the years between their 
wonderful years and now had not been. She is so alive 
to him, so near. 

Eight years you know since he paid off all the liens and 
things on their dear little house. It has always been let 
furnished — I had always looked after it and did not know 
what to do about it. And now the tenants are to go and I 
am to try to put into the old order — Happy’s way! I do 
not know why — for Jim means to be killed. Though, natu- 
rally, he isn’t saying it. But I am praying so hard per- 
haps — 


27 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

^‘r like to think of that little Heaven-spot just waiting — 
the way she liked it.” 

Was all that he said. Who says that we English aren’t 
romantic? 

I dared not ask if I might write it all to you. He would 
have said '"no.” But if he dies, or is wounded, you will 
tell Happy — all? Remember, Dick, he is simply the very 
best sort that there is ! No man could be finer or stronger 
than Jim now! Only too still and and a kind of stern 
gentleness. And that darling mouth of his! It looks as 
if he could not imagine himself deserving any sort of hap- 
piness! Oh Dick! If — if 

But I hear nothing of Happy. Last year the New York 
Allans said that they were sure that she had not divorced 
Jim. That everybody supposed him to be dead. I said 
nothing. That seemed best for her. If I had seen Jim 
then I should not have been able to resist bragging about 
him. If only she wanted him to be alive! There could 
never be anyone but Happy for Jim. You know! The 
Spencers are ‘'one-man dogs” aren’t they Dick? Faithful 
hearted, whatever else they may be! And that was an 
O’Heartley trait too. Never a second wife in the wild lot 
of them. Doubtless though, they sent a few to early graves 
for love of them ! 

This is a fearful sentimental mess of a letter. But I am 
heart-achey today. London is too dreary! There are no 
words to tell how sad we are — under the skin. Come when 
it is over, Dick. I shall want to see any Spencers who may 
be left ! For five years back I have been gloating over the 
larky month that you gave this lone widow-woman. I 
never dreamed that London could be such sport. I know 
that you will answer, telling me more than I dare to ask. 


28 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

You are always my first cousin, though I fancy it’s really 
a third? 

Alice Gordon-Gordon. 

With these letters under my hand Happy spoke the first 
bitter words that I had ever heard from her. They were 
like a sign post leading away from Jim. And Ran had 
been beaming these last days. Happy was kinder. Sir 
Pierce had beeh a week in Montreal on war office business 
— all the same he should have been on his way to the 
Front — and Ran had made headway. For years past he 
has always done what he calls ^"Proposing to her in public.” 
But of late his statements of his intentions have been more 
explicit, — dated, as it were. 

Sometimes Happy pulls him up on the curb, more often 
she just chaffs him. 

‘'Oh ! Ran doesn’t do it differently from any other Ameri- 
can man,” she tells us. 

“They all make love in public and say nothing about it 
in private. When the American man has told you about it 
in terms of flowers — ordered by telephone from the florist — 
you have to take the rest for granted — ^fill in the blanks 
with im.aginary remarks of an affectionate nature. Ameri- 
can men are not lovers — that is all.” 

“Well,” said Ran in the sulks. “What does your prize- 
package Englishman talk about? As far as I can see he 
just sits and glares unless he is ‘explaining beet sugar, or 
why the English must wear their hats in Parliament or 
what he would advise you to do for a colt with the colic.’ ” 

“Ran, you are indecent. Not that Sir Pierce has such 
an idea as me in his head.” 

{Yells from Ran and the family,) She went on. 


29 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


‘‘But an Englishman does feel it — when he has it, and 
makes you feel it. Our men merely go through the 
m.otions of being in love and we American women are find- 
ing out that we have missed something.'^ 

This didn’t really hit Ran. He is nervous and jumpy 
when Happy is not there and a bit silly when she is. All 
the worst symptoms of a bad case. And it looks as if she 
ought to marry Ran, as if she were beginning to “care.” 

That afternoon when we were seeing the battalion “off” 
he came over to us just as Happy hissed out that little 
whisper of Destiny’s prompting. She had patted his coat 
sleeve when he pointed out the Duke and the Duchess and 
Princess Patricia down on the curbstone, elbowed by the 
crowd and only now and again saluted by a marching 
officer who chanced to catch sight of the Duke’s khaki. 

Their Royal Highnesses seemed “nice” and “democratic” 
to Ran. I left him to share the niceness and the demo- 
cratic savour with Happy. 


2 

Never so much in my life did I wish that I had the habit 
of prayer. I wanted to pray over that letter. No merely 
human creature with prejudices and a profession could de- 
cide a thing like that. 

It was now September. Happy had asked my advice 
about the quietest way to manage the divorce and asked me 
not to speak to Ran about it. But even then I could not 
read Jim’s letter. I was just plain “funking” it, waiting for 
a more direct “leading.” 

Sir Pierce had come back to Ottawa that week and 

3a 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

Happy was devoting more time to him, seemed to like to 
sit quietly with him. 

'*rve seen a lot of him in the last five years/’ she said. 
‘"And I like him more than ever. He rests me.” 

''Yes. He is as reposeful as Woodlawn cemetery!” said 
Ran. 

Ran’s face looked like a handbook of all the more pain- 
ful methods of committing murder. But he had to take it. 
Happy was threatening to pack him off if "he didn’t be- 
have.” But she was interested in his sulks — and his love- 
making. ... 

It was after dinner and we had the Terrace to ourselves,- — 
a miracle of a night in dark-blue velvet, and wearing some 
especially good diamond stars over the Towers on Parlia- 
ment Hill. 

Happy says that it seems unfair to all the other hotels 
in the world — that stage setting of the Chateau Laurier 
with the wooded cliff of the Hill and the Rideau Canal and 
the wide River and the Park, not to mention all the rest of 
Upper Canada for a back-drop. She is always running to 
the parapet to watch the little boats climb up hill through 
the locks and we were there at the moment, because a 
launch was just slipping through the top gates. 

I had just called her attention to the fact that Canadian 
stars are larger than other stars, when she said it — pricked 
the sore spot where my secret was festering. 

"Dick, hasn’t Ran been just too dear and — and — human 
— these last days?” 

We had been over to the Plattsburg Centenary — in 
Ran’s cars — of course 

"Dick, what do you really think about Ran — deep, true 


31 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

'thinks’ I mean ? Fm — O ! Help a fellah to think straight, 
Dick! Ran must go away this Winter or I — 1. ...” 

"You are an outrageous little flirt and you are old enough 
to know better!” I said. 

It slipped off her because she isn’t — neither a flirt nor 
old enough to know better — nobody is ever old enough for 
that. 

"But I love Ran ! I adore you all ! That is the trouble 
— I love every one of you !” 

She said it with a funny, cuddling little gesture all her 
own. It is something different she does with her hands — 
not like anybody’s movements. 

But that is the truth, the open secret of Happy’s irresis- 
tibleness. She does love us and not just our love for her. 
She does not simply feed her vanity on our devotion but 
feels that way about us, loves us in return. In every way 
but one. That way is so high-barred and well-posted 
that we make no mistakes. We do not run our heads into 
the wall on that side. Happy has the gift of the comrade 
heart, the playfellow spirit as no other beautiful woman 
ever had it. And come to think of it, very likely only a 
beautiful woman could have it perfectly, without envy or 
bitterness. 

We went back to the others under the lights of the awn- 
ing. Sir Pierce was smoking, his mythological profile 
turned to Mother and Lutie, deep in the home papers. We 
had made Ottawa in time for a late dinner. Ran was read- 
ing a Montreal paper. He seemed in desperate earnest 
over something, gnawed at his cigar, worried his thumb 
with his fingers and fussed in his pockets. He started, I 
thought, to say something to me but turned the movement 
into lighting another cigar before he burrowed again in the 


32 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


paper. ‘‘I dare say the financial news makes him afraid that 
he might miss one or two millions he thinks he ought to 
make this year.’' ... I remember telling myself. Mother 
and Lutie were giving us the press accounts of the Platts- 
burgh affair, filling in the interstices in their memory. 
They, and Sir Pierce, were in a glow of international good 
feeling. 

Mother relieved her emotional stress by saying, 

‘Tt was all too touching ! And such a lesson to the world 
now I Do read this Happy — you read so beautifully!” 

And Happy fell for it — read us a bit of the commemo- 
ration speech that we had thought struck the finest note of 
the lot. 

Happy did not spare us any of the thrills. She has that 
kind of a voice and a supernatural witchery in using it to the 
best advantage, for any purpose she likes. Her purpose, 
at the moment, I guessed, was to make war detestable and 
Peace heavenly ; also I noted, that after the first few phrases 
she was making it up as she went along. I had been only 
ten feet distant from the distinguished orator who made 
that heart-pricking speech at Plattsburg and although he 
had said high and wonderful things he had not ‘'got off” 
the speech Happy was giving us with scenic effects now. 

When she got really into her stride. Mother broke in — 

“Why, Dearest, I don’t remember that part!” 

And Happy said, making a moue at me behind the paper 
because of my stern, reproachful expression. 

“Don’t interrupt Darlingest Muzzie ! Just listen ! And 
weep all you want to. But mind ! Dick ! No sniffles from 
youT 

“Huh!” I snorted, but you couldn’t stop her. 

Besides she seemed to be deep in it, under the surface of 


33 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

her tricks and improvisation. She always does with us 
what she will so we were back with her in that old grave- 
yard at Plattsburg yearning in a pleasant surge of senti- 
ment over the dead who have lain there, comfortably enough 
no doubt, these hundred years back. 

Only Ran was out of tune, refused to be carried with her. 
He scowled insultingly at the fine dome of our Library of 
Parliament, and rustled his newspaper. Almojst swore 
when Happy pulled out the vox humana stop in her voice. 
I kicked him in the shins but without visible effect. It was 
a dark Cimmerian grouch. I decided to let him stay lost 
in it. Happy on a high horse is too good to lose. She 
was getting the starlight in her eyes and taking catchy 
little breaths the way she does when her ‘‘better feelings” 
are about to get the best of her. 

She held the paper wide spread before her face and 
began again after an oratorical pause of impressive weight. 

“Always, all over the world, with civilised peoples as 
with savages, it has been a custom, in some countries a 
religion, to speak well of the dead. We are come together 
here today for that reverent purpose — to speak well of the 
Dead, of those who, for a long time have been honorably, 
gloriously, most generously, dead ! For these men, whether 
British or American, whom we foregather here to cele- 
brate, give their lives to their country. 

NOT THEN, NOR NOW, NOR ANYWHERE, CAN A MAN 
GIVE MORE THAN HIS DIFE. 

These HEROES lying here seem very real presences — 
“Heroes! Heroes, indeed.” They who forded the river at 
midnight, they who kept the bridges, they who fought out 
there on the Saratoga after her whole starboard battery 
was silenced— — ” 


34 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


‘‘But— tah! But — ^tah — Mrs. Spencer — ah — th — that you 
know was a trick — a neat little Yankee trick. That warp- 
ing her about business — I’ll explain ” 

“O!” Now it’s you Sir Pierce!” wailed Happy. Sir 
Pierce leaned toward her, eager, courteous but bound to set 
her right in the matter of British seamanship. 

“Ol” Sir Pierce! How could you interrupt me just 
when it was going so beautifully! Muzzie mopping her 
eyes and everybody enjoying themselves over those graves! 
But I suppose a whipping is a hard thing to take grace- 
fully. Still, I did think that everybody — even you Sir 
Pierce admitted by this time that the British suffered a bit 
of a fiasco at Plattsburg. And just as I was coming to 
something so kind about the British ! Here it is ” 

She elevated that deluded newspaper to hide her wicked- 
ness. 

“And today, remembering so many heroes who achieved, 
whose place in history is marked by stars and crowned by 
P'ame, let us not forget to commemorate the UNSUCCESS- 
FUL — those Heroes who went to their sleep — or their 
eternal rest, that night, without the solace of Victory.” 

“Huh ! Humph ! Heroes !” It was Ran this time. “I’m 
dead sick of ’em. A hero’s just any old skate with a bad 
case of itching ego. A chap with a yearn to see his Little 
Self come out on top — even if it kills him. Never met a 
hero myself who wasn’t several blends of blackguard when 
he wasn’t doing his hero-stunts.” 

“How horrid, you are. Ran!” said Happy, as if she 
meant it. 

Somehow it was horrid, not impersonal. Rather as if 
he wanted Happy to remember and despise one especial, 
nameable hero. At the very least, it wasn’t as big as Ran 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


looks as if he ought to be. Nor could it help him along the 
way that he wanted to go. Nor could I make out for the 
life of me why he was stupid enough to let himself ^‘break’' 
like that. He is under a strain and showing it. But this 
was crass, asinine. Happy would not miss its full import — 
nor fail to realise the revelation of something hard, ugly 
under his generous spread of surface. 

And Ran never loses a shade of anybody’s meaning, least 
of all, of Happy’s. He is the shrewdest man playing for 
first place in the American money game. This was the 
only fool move I ever knew him to make. 

I was hot in the collar, too. The letters burned in my 
breast pocket. Alice’s words were almost out of my mouth. 

‘‘No man could be finer than Jim now. Remember, Dick, 
he is simply the best there is !” 

I wanted to fling it in Ran’s face. Stand up and fight 
him for it — for Jim and Jim’s old “hero-stunts.” And I 
knew that I was face to face with it for the last time — that 
I must read Jim’s letter to Happy instantly. Ran might 
be out of it after this. I knew what was going on under 
Happy’s still eyes that she kept turned on him. But Sir 
Pierce — one guess was as good as another now. But she 
has said that she would never go back to England. . . . 

Ran tightened his lips and Happy took her sombre eyes 
away from him. She tried to make it easier for the rest of 
us — sent out a gay little trill of a laugh. 

“We are off the key. Let us get on again. The En- 
tente Cordiale part of this speech is what we need.” She 
began again to read, or invent, — for a minute. I couldn’t 
pull myself together well enough to find out which; my 
befogged wits were anchored over one spot, Jim’s letter to 


86 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


her and the fact that I must read it at once and decide for 
or against giving it to her, now, within the hour. 

I heard Happy's beautiful low tones sound a few words, 
then I began to follow. 

''The celebration on this occasion of the long peace be- 
tween us caries with it a beautiful thought, for the world's 
ultimate symbol of civilisation, the most significant monu- 
ment to Peace, is not that idle Palace at the Hague; it is 
a monument not made by hands, not visible to the eye, 
though it is big enough for all men to see and as high as 
Heaven is high — a monument for all peoples to note and 
to emulate — ^yet a monument that is only an imaginary line 
— four thousand miles long — the line that is the border 
between the two greatest nations of Earth, a border with- 
out a fort, without a ship, without an armed man to pre- 
serve its integrity,* — 

THE UNDEFENDED BORDER BETWEEN THE UNITED 
STATES AND CANADA 

God keep it ever defenseless save for our hands clasped 
across it in friendship." 

Happy gave one of her little paws to mother and one to 
Lutie. But Ran didn't make any signal of international 
amity in my direction or in Lovelly's. 

He continued to stab with his stick at a perfect specimen 
of his bootmaker's art. Muzzie was still sopping her eyes. 

Sir Pierce was clearing his throat of something which 
he quite evidently resented as an intrusion upon his per- 
sonal privacy. 

"However did we miss all that part?" he said. I heard 
an awfully good bit of oratin’ stuff, I must say, but I didn't 
hear quite that you've just been readin'." 


37 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


‘‘No/' said Happy as innocently as a baby saying, “Now 
1 lay me," 

“There wasn't very much of a report of Plattsburg in 
this paper. I knew that Adopted Muzzie would be dis- 
appointed so I made most of it up as I went along." Shall 
I do some more for you? And what subject please?" 

I returned her hand to her. Ran had folded his news- 
paper into a tight oblong and was getting up to “See about 
some telegrams," he said. 

One of those wordless wireless messages that we none 
of us believe in but all get at one time or another, clicked 
in my brain. 

“There is something in that Montreal paper Ran doesn't 
want us to see." 

That seemed ridiculous for any and everybody reads a 
newspaper. It could not be a secret that Ran hoped to 
keep to himself indefinitely. Feeling like a bit of a fool 
I stretched a hand and took the paper. 

“If you are through with it, give me a look in. Ran !" 

I said as casually as you do say that sort of thing. 

Ran's face flooded with crimson. His eyes corkscrewed 
mine. Then he slumped back in his chair. I thought that 
he did not speak because he could not. No one else seemed 
to see all this. The other four were deep in talking over 
Plattsburg — the personalities and functions. Sir Pierce 
was chortling over Mother who insisted that she had had 
“The time of her life." Happy was recounting what she 
called Mother's victims. 

“After that first banquet four generals, three Colonels, 
one senator, one Chief Justice and uncounted “Also pre- 
sents" were struggling to talk to her at once, weren't they 
Lutie?" That charming Senator with the beard asked me 


38 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

for her hand but I discouraged him. Told him that he 
would only be about twenty-three on Muzzle’s waiting list 
and that she was not thinking of marrying for some years 
yet.” 

‘'Dick make this imp hold her saucy tongue. She has no 
respect for my age and widowhood. Puts all her own sins 
on my old shoulders.” 

“Susan Maria,” said I. “You can’t throw dust in our 
unspoiled Canadian eyes. We noted your unseemly be- 
haviour. ...” 

I was saying anything that came first while I ran over 
the headlines. The flash of the message had died down by 
this time. I told myself that I had imagined Ran’s upset. 
There was nothing sensational in the New York financial 
news. 

I read the usual war heads and turned the page for 
the London Special Correspondent. 

“Want the London letter?” It is headlined,” 

“England needs officers. Loss of officers the Big Peril.” 
I stopped this and skipped. But very likely it was over- 
squeamishness on my part. Sir Pierce sent forth his smoke 
rings at about the same number per minute and kept his 
serene Du Maurier countenance turned as always, full on 
Happy. I was led to suppose, from his serenity, that when 
he got ready to go to the front he would go. If his reasons 
for not yet being there were satisfactory to him, the 
voice of the whole British Empire raised, as one man, in 
protest, would convince him of nothing save of the 
British Empire’s impertinence. Nevertheless, he ought 
to go to the Front. And Happy ought to tell him so. 
Happy could do it. Happy, you see, is not the whole 
British Empire. She is — is — just Happy. 


39 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

And Sir Pierce ought to be grateful that she is. If she 
were not unspoiled and without any conceit of conquest he 
would be making himself pretty darned ridiculous. He sits 
up and begs or plays dead whenever she flicks so much 
as an eyelash in his direction. And ‘'Headquarters’’ is be- 
ginning to watch her with anxiety. Since that morning I 
had happened to know — ^via Government House, there were 
already inquiries from K. of K. as to why Sir Pierce Lovelly 
had not yet followed in person his contribution of five thou- 
sand pounds. It was my first news of the fund, and I was 
glad. But it shed light on the unpatriotic extravagance of 
being devoted to Happy. 

Looking over the headlines for something less personal 
than “OFFICERS NEEDED” I read out the next capitals. 

“London now ringing with the name of the hero who 
blew up the railway bridge. The censor has allowed his 
name to be given out.” 

“Oh!” said Lutie. “That was wonderful. Go on Dick!” 

“Aw ! Quit this Sunday-school class,” said Ran. “Come 
along to the telegraph office with me. I’ve something I 
want to get off my chest.” 

There was no doubt about his being upset. But, ob- 
viously, it was his money game. He did not turn to see if 
I had followed him. In half a minute his big stride had 
taken him through the door into the corridor. 

“Read it, Dick,” said Happy. “Ran will be an hour over 
those wires. He corresponds by wire. Never forgets to 
tell me about the weather in his telegrams. Besides, Dick, 
your financial advice would be a disaster to anybody. You 
would die in an “Home for Ancient and Indigent Bachelors” 
if Lutie didn’t do your investing for you.” 

All of which idle talk convinces me that there is no such 


40 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


thing as idle talk. All speech is but the surface bubbling 
of some deeper current running toward a predestined end. 

It all had to come in just that way, in that light — the light 
of Ran’s hatefulness, the spot-light of high emotion. 

Happy's old sensitive memories had to be seared, burned 
out — struck by lightning. 

This made me none the less a blockhead of the woodenest. 

I began to read : 

‘‘On Thursday London was agog with the story of the 
officer who penetrated the enemy's line by swimming a 
river, wading swamps, evading the outposts and succeeded 
in blowing up a railway bridge vital to the enemy's supply 
trains. 

A sergeant's letter — the Censor let us have it without 
names — said that ^^it took them twelve hours to get over 
four canals and a swamp before they reached the river 
which he could not swim, the current being too strong for 
him, but not for the officer who swam it with virtually 
nothing on him but the explosive and fuse tied in a rubber 
cap on his head. The officer landed in a swamp, ploughed 
through the mud, found his bridge and set his fuse. When 
the explosion came he had fifteen minutes start in the 
swamp before the enemy's patrol began to fire into it. 
After another twelve hours he got back to the serjeant, 
his clothes and three biscuits. That night they requi- 
sitioned two invalided bicycles, coffee, cheese and a bottle 
of wine, which the sergeant says that he alone drank as 
the officer was a “teetote." 

Unfortunately to-day's report says that he has since been 
seriously, though it is hoped not fatally, wounded. 

The Boer war got him a V. C., but that priceless little 
four-pence-hapenny cross of the Major's will certainly 


41 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


swing from yet another bar. His name is in every mouth 
in England to-day. 

‘'Major (formerly Colonel) James Chetwoode York” — 
broke off but it was of no use. Sir Pierce finished auto- 
matically. 

"York-Spencer, redivivus, by Jove!” 

For him during about thirty seconds the name seemed to 
have no connection with Happy. The English brain is so 
superbly national and single-minded ! But nobody bothered 
with Sir Pierce’s brain processes. 

Mother was speechless. She clasped her hands tight on 
Happy’s knee. Lutie spoke after she had glanced at 
Happy’s face, — ^but one word only. 

"Jim!” 

Happy’s mouth was firm and her chin high. Her eyes 
looked as if they saw a resurrection happening before them. 

My weak kneed struggle to decide for her was over. But 
I wanted quick action. Also I wanted to get around to 
Ran’s case of herophobia. 

"Come up into the writing rom, Happy. I have some 
letters for you. Lovelly, go down into the grill room and 
feed the others something. PlI be there to fetch them pre- 
sently.” At the minute, acting under orders was good for 
Lovelly — Poor Devil !” 

We were alone in the long Mezzanine foyer of the 
Chateau. I put Happy in a big chair. 

"Here is Alice’s letter to me. Read it first. And here is 
Jim’s letter to me. There is another. Perhaps I shall not 
give it to you. The enclosures are in my safe. The draft 
is for twelve thousand pounds.” 

She said nothing but her eyes were luminous. She began 
to read Alice’s letter. I went to the far end of the room 


42 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

and took out Jim’s letter to Happy. There seemed to be 
no way out of it, so I read it. 

It had no beginning. 

“I have ordered Dick to read this because he is not 
to give it to you if you might, by any chance, be happier 
without it. 

Perhaps it is a bit weak of me, but I do not want to go 
tc the Front without telling you what I sometimes think — 
dare to think — ^you know without the telling — that there 
was never the least shadow of truth in any woman story — 
that the poor creature you saw that last day was merely 
trying to be kind to a beast. 

I hate stirring up this vile mud. But whatever nasty 
stain maybe on our life that sort of stain is not there. I 
thought that in case I do not turn up — after the scrap — 
there might be a bare chance of your being glad to have me 
tell you this. Naturally I had not meant to come to life 
again, but the war puts a new responsibility on a soldier. 
England needs trained men. I shall hope for a lucky 
chance to get some of the old tarnish rubbed oif the name. 
Dick will tell you about the little that I am now able to offer 
on account 0)f all my indebtedness to you. Of course, if 
you choose, you are to sell the house. It is unencumbered 
now. I should never be able to bring myself to the point 
of parting with it. 

J. C. Y.^S. 

I sat, looking deep into life when Happy rushed upon me. 

‘'Jim’s letter, Dick ! O ! Dickie ! How could you? Why 
didn’t you — at once? But I know. You thought that I 
wasn’t worth it all. Two men dangling sickened you. 
Ugh ! Right you were ! O ! Dick ! All those splendid ten 


43 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


years of his ! And all the while I was a self-righteous, stiff - 
necked little fool! He was ill — just weak and ill, that 
dreadful year ! And I didn’t stand by ! Little fool — fool ! — 

‘'You are a little ifool now,” I said, “Of course it was only 
your bolting that stiffened him, made him sit up and face 
himself.” 

I gave her the letter. She cuddled it under her chin. 

“I’m not good enough to read it. I’ll just keep it to 
pray to.” 

Thereupon, seating herself, she began at once to read it. 
I had already started to go downstairs. 

She called after me, and no quavers in her voice at that — 

“Please come back for me in ten minutes. Take me down 
to the family.” 

When I got back she was not there. I found her in the 
grill rom. Ran, mummified, was seated opposite to her. 

The orchestra began a medley of national airs. It does 
this at least three times an evening since the Fourth of 
August so that we are all quite used to holding a cooling 
mouthful on a fork while we stand up for OUR OWN. 

After the Marseillaise and a fury of rapid fire clapping 
we had the “Star Spangled Banner.” At the next table a 
near-lady with one of those imported accents, I don’t know 
which one and I don’t think she does — said, 

“I rarther fawncy that’s that Amierrr’c’n thing, isint it — 
tah? 

Happy arose from her chair — with her back to the near- 
lady — 

“Up 1 Up 1 All of you. I have been on my feet for yours 
all summer. Up for mine now. You have all got to be 
very polite to America for a little while now.” 


44 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 


Ran looked at her with a tremendous question in his eyes. 
I saw his hand trembling. Evidently he did not know yet. 
He roared out the few words of his National anthem with 
whidh he had a speaking acquaintance and made a mighty 
noise on as many of the rest of the notes as he could reach. 

We are all rather solemn when it comes to ours now- 
adays. But Happy’s eyes were shining — shining soft, not 
hard, and she was the first on her feet when the music 
began. One or two table took up the words. Then the 
whole room sang with a boom in the voices, ‘'GOD 
SAVE THE KING!” and Happy’s voice topped the 
others. Her radiance made me think of Condillac’s 
phrase. 

“The first time that we see light, we are it, rather than 
see it I” That comes near telling how she looked. 

“Dearest Adopted Muzzie I But this is my country too. 
Nothing between us but that Undefended Border. You 
know!” 

And Mother seemed to know. 

Happy made her good night speeches. First one to me 
— for a wonder. 

“Dick, please hurry about my transportation. No matter 
which boat. Just the quickest over — Quebec or New York. 
Will you see about the cables — now?” 

“Come early in the morning, Lutie. I shall be packed 
and keeping my last minutes for Muzzie and you.” 

She turned to Sir Pierce. 

“Fm sure you’re through with killing time, aren’t you? 
Of course we’ve all guessed — it was your Division command 
you’ve been waiting for? But you will be in a hurry too 
— soon. Now that my husband is wounded I shall be get- 
ting over as quickly as possible — naturally.” 


45 


THE UNDEFENDED BORDER 

Sir Pierce took it standing. Nothing outside of him 
changed much but I fear that something inside him changed 
a good bit. 

‘'Naturally! Naturally!'’ he i :peated in an automatic 
talking-machine voice that scratched on my nerves. 

The look that I got at Ran didn’t make me want another. 
Happy did not look at all, threw him a little wave of her 
hand. 

“Nightie till tomorrow, Ran. I am going to ask you to 
do a heap of cousinly chores in our home town.” 

Here Sir Pierce got his own voice into commission more 
or less. 

“I dessay I shall be gettin’ off by your boat, too. I’ve a 
note from the Duke this afternoon. He hears that I’ve my 
division. But whether or no, we’ve all jolly well got to get 
in — wherever we’re by way of bein’ put. I fancy they are 
needin’ us old ’uns at the Front.” 

We were out in the corridor then. Happy took Sir 
Pierce’s hand and clung long to it. Mother had her other 
one. If she had had another perhaps she would have given 
it to me. 

“Sir Pierce you are splendid ! Splendid, my countrymen ! 
All of you — all splendid!” She looked right over me. 

In big moments everybody does. 

If the recruiting officer finds you stiff-jointed from a 
bullet in a long-ago war that everybody else has forgotten 
and you are nondescript in your general appearance, natur- 
ally, you can’t expect to have a big minute of your own. 
You can only hope to be “in” at other person’s “big Min- 
utes.” 

But I shall have the fun of delivering Happy in person 

And to Jim. 


46 



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